ISRC Technology Briefing October 26, 2006 Henry Yan

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ISRC Technology BriefingOctober 26, 2006Henry
Yan

• Business Intelligence

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Agenda

• What is business intelligence (BI)
• Current status of BI
• Future of BI
• Conclusions
• Q A

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Definition

• The process of gathering information in the
  field of business. It can be described as the
  process of enhancing data into information and
  then into knowledge. Business intelligence is
  carried out to gain sustainable competitive
  advantage, and is a valuable core competence in
  some instances.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_intelligence
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Elements of BI
Users
Tools
Warehouse
Extract
Data Sources
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(No Transcript)
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A Failure of Business Intelligence

• An energy companys BI system
• Oracle data warehouse ETL, Hyperion Brio
• Natural Gas price skyrocketed during Katrina
  Rita, resulting in loss of millions because
• Historic data from DW fail to reveal the change
• Let alone generate alerts to analyst management
• Small BI audience limits information
  dissemination
• Moral of the case
• Current BI may not be up to the task for
  time-sensitive analysis and decision-making

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BI Can Fail Because it is Often

• Reliant on non Real-time data
• Reactive rather than proactive
• Summarizing past rather than looking forward
• Esoteric
• Employees with necessary business and technical
  skills are rare

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Future BIs will be increasingly

• Real-time
• Proactive
• Pervasive

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BI will be Real-time or Near Real-time
Source Gartner Survey of 540 organizations
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For Example

• Wisconsin-based energy services provider
• Serving 1.5 million customers in the Mid-West

Source Computerworld, September 18, 2006 and
www.alliantenergy.com
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For Example

• BI system generates financial reports in an hour
• Previously took up to 3 days
• Faster access allowed officials to quickly spot
  accounts receivable problems

Source Computerworld, September 18, 2006 and
www.alliantenergy.com
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Making BI Real-time by

• Bypassing historic repository for time-sensitive
  analysis

Source Stephen Swoyer, Athens, GA
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Making BI Real-time by

• 64-bit in-memory processing
• stores time-sensitive data in the servers RAM
  rather than a data warehouse

Source Stephen Swoyer, Athens, GA
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Making BI Real-time by

• Grid computing
• Multiple SAS instances running in parallel to
  process terabytes of data.
• Execution time down 95

Source Stephen Swoyer, Athens, GA
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BI Will be Proactive

• Blue Cross Blue Shield provider uses its SAS BI
  to detect health insurance fraud.
• Recovered millions of dollars through extensive
  litigation procedures.

Source https//www.highmark.com
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BI Will be Proactive

• Planned BI will detect insurance abuse earlier
• identify abnormalities prior to the money
  going out the door "

Source https//www.highmark.com
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Making BI Proactive by Analogy

• E.g., Intelligence in DBMS
• Push messages to Database Administrator (DBA)
• BI push escalation alert people to issues
  early
• Dynamically reconfigure resources based on loads
• BI eliminate issues before damage done

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Making BI Proactive by Analogy

• E.g., Intelligent agents on Internet
• Track and learn viewers browsing patterns and
  later automatically suggest potential interests
• BI machine learning liberates analysts from
  repetitive work and focus them on critical issues

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BI Will be Pervasive

• Outdoor specialty retailer in NH
• BI provides common view to everyone
• From CEO to store managers

Source http//www.ems.com/ and computerworld,
september 18, 2006
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BI Will be Pervasive

• Pervasive access has enabled them to identify
  locally successful sales tactics and formulate
  company-wide operation strategy
• It has recently reported 73 increase of sales
  thanks to its pervasive BI system

Source http//www.ems.com/ and computerworld,
september 18, 2006
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Making BI Pervasive by

• Pervasiveness of use interface
• Mobile device
• Large-scale deployment in office
• Web-based, Service-oriented architecture
• Open-source to cut cost
• Piggyback on office productivity software
• Data Visualization

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Conclusions

• BI anticipated to be a top IT spending priority
  due to CEOs desire to gain competitive
  advantage.
• Spending can be justified if BI provides
  compelling returns via
• real-time or near real-time
• proactive
• pervasive

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QuestionsCommentsObservations